A Backward Glance at EightyCharles A. Murdock1 My grandfather was the oldest of the brothers. When he married Betsy Buss his father set aside for him twenty acres of the home farm, and here he built the house in which he lived for forty years, raising a family of ten children. I remember quite clearly my great-grandfather Silas Hills. He was old and querulous, and could certainly scold; but now that I know that he was born in 1760, and had nineteen brothers and sisters, I think of him with compassion and wonder. It connects me with the distant past to think I remember a man who was sixteen years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed. He died at ninety-five, which induces apprehension.2 My grandfather's house faced the country road that ran north over the rolling hills among the stone-walled farms, and was about a mile from the common that marked the center of the town. It was white, of course, with green blinds. The garden in front was fragrant from Castilian roses, Sweet Williams, and pinks. There were lilacs and a barberry-bush. A spacious hall bisected the house. The south front room was sacred to funerals and weddings; we seldom entered it. Back of that was grandma's room. Stairs in the hall led to two sleeping-rooms above. The north front room was "the parlor," but seldom used. There on the center-table reposed Baxter's Saints' Rest and Young's Night Thoughts. The fireplace flue so seldom held a fire that the swallows utilized the chimney for their nests. Back of this was the dining-room, in which we lived. It had a large brick oven and a serviceable fireplace. The kitchen was an ell, from which stretched woodshed, carriage-house, pigpen, smoking-house, etc. Currant and quince bushes, rhubarb, mulberry, maple, and butternut trees were scattered about. An apple orchard helped to increase the frugal income.3 We raised corn and pumpkins, and hay for the horse and cows. The corn was gathered into the barn across the road, and a husking-bee gave occasion for mild merrymaking. As necessity arose the dried ears were shelled and the kernels taken to the mill, where an honest portion was taken for grist. The corn-meal bin was the source of supply for all demands for breakfast cereal. Hasty-pudding never palled. Small incomes sufficed. Our own bacon, pork, spare-rib, and souse, our own butter, eggs, and vegetables, with occasional poultry, made us little dependent on others. One of the great-uncles was a sportsman, and snared rabbits and pickerel, thus extending our bill of fare. Bread and pies came from the weekly baking, to say nothing of beans and codfish. Berries from the pasture and nuts from the woods were plentiful. For lights we were dependent on tallow candles or whale-oil, and soap was mostly home-made.4 Life was simple but happy. The small boy had small duties. He must pick up chips, feed the hens, hunt eggs, sprout potatoes, and weed the garden. But he had fun the year round, varying with the seasons, but culminating with the winter, when severity was unheeded in the joy of coasting, skating, and sleighing in the daytime, and apples, chestnuts, and pop-corn in the long evenings.QuestionGiven the context of the passage, what does the word querulous mean in the first paragraph?ResponsesA complainingcomplainingB depresseddepressedC kindkindD outgoingoutgoing

Your kinship relationship with your grandfather is based on:Group of answer choicesaffinityfictive kinshiplawconsanguinity PreviousNext

Jim Smily and His Jumping FrogMark TwainMR. A. WARD,DEAR SIR:—1 Well, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and I inquired after your friend Leonidas W. Smily, as you requested me to do, and I hereunto append the result. If you can get any information out of it you are cordially welcome to it. I have a lurking suspicion that your Leonidas W. Smily is a myth—that you never knew such a personage, and that you only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smily, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was your design, Mr. Ward, it will gratify you to know that it succeeded.2 I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the barroom stove of the little old dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Boomerang, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smily—Rev. Leonidas W. Smily—a young minister of the gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of this village of Boomerang. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smily, I would feel under many obligations to him.3 Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair—and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the quiet, gently-flowing key to which he turned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm—but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smily, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once.QuestionWhat can the reader conclude about the story that Simon Wheeler is going to tell the narrator?ResponsesA The story will be long and tedious.The story will be long and tedious.B Smily thinks the story is ridiculous.Smily thinks the story is ridiculous.C The story will be short and succinct.The story will be short and succinct.D The narrator thinks the story is serious.The narrator thinks the story is serious.

Jim Smily and His Jumping FrogMark TwainMR. A. WARD,DEAR SIR:—1 Well, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and I inquired after your friend Leonidas W. Smily, as you requested me to do, and I hereunto append the result. If you can get any information out of it you are cordially welcome to it. I have a lurking suspicion that your Leonidas W. Smily is a myth—that you never knew such a personage, and that you only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smily, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was your design, Mr. Ward, it will gratify you to know that it succeeded.2 I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the barroom stove of the little old dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Boomerang, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smily—Rev. Leonidas W. Smily—a young minister of the gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of this village of Boomerang. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smily, I would feel under many obligations to him.3 Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair—and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the quiet, gently-flowing key to which he turned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm—but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in finesse. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smily, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once.QuestionWell, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and I inquired after your friend Leonidas W. Smily, as you requested me to do, and I hereunto append the result.Which is the BEST definition of the word garrulous as it is used in this sentence?ResponsesA cruel and unkindcruel and unkindB overweight and generally unhealthyoverweight and generally unhealthyC quiet, untalkative, and mostly silentquiet, untalkative, and mostly silentD excessively talkative in a rambling, roundabout manner

describe the characteristics of the elder and the younger brother from the story THE TWO BROTHERS from communication with cambrige 8 revised edition

does really old historicist focus only on the renaincence